The Disadvantage to Mixing Money with Essential Services

Yet those working in newsrooms talk of dubious stories being tolerated because, in the words of one, some senior editors think “a click is a click, regardless of the merit of a story”. And, if the story does turn out to be false, it’s simply a chance for another bite at the cherry.

There are a few types of services that are essential to human advancement:

Health

Safety

Education

Government

This isn’t a great list but we’ll go with it.

I’d say that MEDIA is another one to add. It could be added to education, just as we could add Safety to Health, but let’s leave it where it is.

Money (or greed for it, more accurately) is a disease that destroys quietly and subtly.

If you get sick in the richest country in the world you will pay vast amounts of money to get well, and if you get REALLY sick you have a very real chance of losing everything (even if you survive)

Safety is done pretty well in the U.S., and that’s because it’s socialized. Note: doesn’t apply to the poor, where it’s often quite hard to get police response

Education is now so expensive in the United States that you have to be upper middle class to afford it, meaning your family probably makes at least 100K as a household

And the problem is now hitting our media outlets. People are being pushed into publishing garbage because it gets clicks and clicks get advertising dollars.

There are still groups that keep the standard high, but they’re reserved mostly for the elite (just like everything else).

As money becomes more and more of a factor in media, the quality will come down for all but the specialized services that cater to the top readers/consumers.

Most headlines will trend towards news entertainment, just as we see CNN and FOX heading towards.

Fast food vs. substantial meals. In the name of profit.

We must soon learn that core services must be shielded from greed. If we don’t learn this lesson we’ll be watching TMZ for news, eating McDonalds for our meals, and going to school at the University of Phoenix.